What would be a good portable Dac/Amp to use with my HD6xx and Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone?
I am new to this hobby. I purchased a HD6XX and plan to use it with my Sony Xperia 1 V cell phone, that has a 3.5mm jack. I was wondering if I needed a portable dac/amp or just a portable amp and if so what would one recommend? Any assistance one could provide, would be greatly appreciated. Kind regards, Haz
Mar 7, 2024
That's too high for the average mobile device.
Gigabyte Z170X-UHD motherboard: Loud enough to cause hearing damage with extended use.
Kindle Fire HD: Louder than the phone, not as loud as my motherboard. Just right for most of my listening.
Yamaha RX-V665 Home Theater Receiver: Plenty of volume. Comfortable at +0 DB.
Audio-gd NFB-11 DAC/AMP: On "low" power, comfortable up to around 50% volume. "High" power is over kill. But the analog knob on my desktop is nice :D
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8554/the-iphone-6-review/11
I've tried these headphones (and others) with all the digital devices I can get my hands on, out of sheer curiosity. It makes me wonder how many of these people claiming that these headphones "NEED" an amp have actually ever tried listening to them without one? Have you? Be honest.
Reasons why people want an amp so badly is usually because they don't like the sound of the headphone but doesn't acknowledge that, so they buy expensive amps that intentionally distort the sound to try and fix what they don't like.
I own a very good amp. I love having an analog volume knob in front of me, not worrying about cable being long enough, and the extra volume is enjoyed on some tracks as well ;)
What you're not recognizing is that sound reproduction accuracy isn't the end goal here. The goal is listener enjoyment. This is why tube amps are so prevalent in the high end of audio.
High end audio products targeted towards audiophiles for listener enjoyment can focus on high fidelity, but most of the most welcomed ones do not, and focus on distorting sound to please their own respective audiences/attract other audiences.
Products that truly focus on high fidelity are welcomed at times. They are also well recognized in the audiophile community, whether they are dacs, amps, headphones, or anything else, often under the glowing terms such as "boring," "lifeless," "lacks musicality," "bright," "harsh," "analytical," "cold," "needs a $20k cable and maybe some kind of $60k tube amp to wake them up and sing the real sound that they were meant to produce."
; )
(Or you can become an idiot like me and use DSP. I'm broke so I prefer getting music quality that far surpasses what getting multi-thousand dollar setups will give you, for free. Laugh at me all you want. I'm all good. ^_^ )
I'm curious, what kind of DSP process are you using?
Case in point, you supplied the only real exception to this rule yourself. Tube rollers are a different breed and tube amps and buffers are intentionally designed to cater to that niche.
Meanwhile, the majority of mainstream amplification manufacturers have strived for over a century to produce amplification that is true to the source signal and have been more or less successful in doing so. With digital technology and the advent of DSP, there is no production cost benefit to producing hardware components that intentionally inject coloration (distortion) into the listening experience. This is true of the amps in your cell phone, laptop, tablet, ipod, PC motherboard, or outboard amp/dac components. The "more or less" variance is actually quite small, between successful hardware manufacturers and I stand by my claim.
Don't impose your preferences on other people, and respect other people's preferences as well. ------------------------------ The main driver for my DSP setup is this one:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/811837/natural-crossfeed-on-headphones-earphones-for-foobar2000-v2-1-major-update-made-public
It's mainly to simulate speakers without altering the sound signature too much.
I use it along side Equalizer APO and Viper4Android, so I can get it running on all my systems and so that it's not just limited to a music player. Your mileage may vary on how much it improves/ruins your audio experience, but I do recommend everyone to give these things a try, as they are free after all.
: )
It's so easy to get transparent sound these days. Many agree that DSP is the future as we get closer to providing fully transparent audio to the average consumer. Everyone hears differently, and everybody likes different things, so there is no real reference.
Today, your best guess is usually to look at objective measurements, read impressions and guess how something will sound (unless you have access to a product physically to try it out). Sadly, almost all companies try to hide most, if not all the stuff that matters (Frequency response? Distortion at only 1khz? SPL 95? Impedance of xyz? What does this stuff do if the manufacturer does not specify more info?), so trying to chase objective info is near impossible. One then has to rely on subjective impressions (and their respective biases). Good DSP however can fix inherent issues with stereo sound played through headphones, and can be customized by the consumer themselves if they take the time to learn it (instead of just bumping up the bass past clipping, and then complain that digital stuff sounds terrible). We are seeing amazing DSP being thrown out, especially those integrating things such as headtracking to mimic being in a real audio space (well, this is more of a response to the untapped market of VR).
For now, I prefer to just find something that is completely transparent, has audible no noise or distortion, and EQ the **** out of it until I'm happy. :D
How do you think a software EQ and bass boost works? Are there microscopic switches and electrical filter networks in the device that are working in the analog domain?
U-3C already wrote a comprehensive description of a very popular plugin for Foobar and I'm sure a little googling will find you other DSP emulation layers that act in the digital domain *before* it reaches the dac/amp. Try "tube amplifier emulation for windows" as a search term. Linux is so much easier to insert modular plugins like that inline. As I said, I don't really mess with any sort of sound customization to the music I listen to, at least not in Windows.